LONDON CLIMBS GLOBAL GAMES RANKING ON EVE OF GAMES FESTIVAL’S 10TH ANNIVERSARY
- UK capital is now third largest global hub for games makers – pulling ahead of European and North American game dev clusters
- Tenth annual London Games Festival starts tomorrow with over 30 events across the city catering to tens of thousands of professionals and players
- LGF organiser Games London reveals milestone successes: including over £100m games business deals supported in last nine years, the equivalent of £37 return for every £1 invested by Mayor of London
London has risen to become one of the top three global cities for games development as shown by new data revealed on the eve of London Games Festival.
Fresh analysis from Unscrambled and BOP for Games London shows that London has shot up the leaderboard in terms of workforce size – second only to Los Angeles and San Francisco. London was already the biggest UK cluster, representing 25% of the local industry’s jobs, and expanded to become the No.1 in Europe in the last five years – but has now overtaken Canadian hotspots and most US cities.
London now has a workforce of over 13,700 games professionals working across console, PC and mobile games, immersive entertainment and AI for games, beaten only by Los Angeles (22,600) and San Francisco (14,100). A further 9,000+ people in London work in sectors that are games-associated or have expanded to include games such as service and technology providers, entertainment businesses and animation.
Over a quarter of the UK’s total games workforce call London their home, while over a third of the UK’s games contractor workforce are based there; also nearly 50% of all UK games R&D jobs are in London.
The research is being shared on the eve of the annual London Games Festival which starts tomorrow, Wednesday 2 April. (See methodology statement on how these results were calculated below.
London Games Festival is delivered by Games London, an initiative delivered by Film London in partnership with Ukie and supported by the Mayor of London. Last week, the Mayor of London announced funding for Games London had been extended another four years as part of a significant £10m investment in the UK capital’s creative industries that will add £2.5bn overall to the city’s economy.
Games London has also today shared figures that show its life-to-date economic impact. Since the programme started in 2015 it has supported £110m worth of completed deals and software sales for games studios, and £141m addition direct, indirect and induced revenue – additional GVA generated amounts to £39m. In short, every £1 invested by the Mayor of London has generated a significant £37 return for games businesses. That economic activity has supported the creation of over 900 jobs during the period.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “London is now a global gaming capital and Europe’s leading city with a thriving industry bringing significant investment to our country. I’m proud to support the London Games Festival, which is a great showcase for this dynamic and growing industry. As UK’s biggest games event, it generates millions for our economy and helps support our up-and-coming talent as we continue to build a better London for everyone.”
Starting tomorrow, Wednesday 2 April, local, national and global games professionals and players will convene in the city for the start of London Games Festival’s 10th anniversary edition. Key programmes such as Ensemble and Official Selection have already begun, showcasing diverse and innovative talent from across the country and around the world.
Festival event schedule highlights include:
- New Game Plus: A new boutique games expo – Thursday 3 April and Friday 4 April*
- Games Finance Market: Where investors hear pitches from game developers – Tuesday 8 April and Wednesday 9 April**
- The BAFTA Games Awards – Tuesday 9 April**/***
- Screen Play, a conference dedicated to collaborations between games and film/TV – Thursday 10 April
- The free-to-attend Trafalgar Square Games Festival – Friday 11 April
- Experimental game festival Now Play This – Friday 11 April & Saturday 12 April
- A range of 20+ Side Events, including the festival’s closing event, a performance from the London Video Game Orchestra at Cadogan Hall – Sunday 13 April
*Thursday tickets sold out
**These events are ticketed and/or registration only
***BAFTA Games Awards hosted by Phil Wang are streaming live on YouTube and Twitch at 7pm BST on Tuesday 9 April
More details can be found at www.games.london and the festival platform https://festival.games.london – tickets can be purchased via https://
tickets.games.london
London Games Festival is also delighted to welcome this year’s Official Partners of the Festival, which include Alliotts, BAFTA Games Awards, Corpay, Coutts, the Department for Business & Trade, Hasbro, Renaissance PR, and Taylor Wessing. Their support is instrumental in making the Festival possible, from funding and strategic guidance to in-kind contributions and sector expertise.
LGF Country Partners include: BitSummit, Creative Wales, Games Ground Berlin, Italian Interactive Digital Entertainment Association, Invest in Madrid, and the UK Games Fund.
Statistics Methodology – Unscrambled
To provide the Games London workforce data Unscrambled analysed LinkedIn alongside traditional workforce statistics.
There are a number of advantages to using LinkedIn. It enables the identification of freelancers, contractors and micro enterprises (typically missing from traditional statistics), and provides in depth features of the global games workforce across multiple industries.
In principle Unscrambled use the platform as a prefilled survey where users have detailed their skills and career histories, 36m active profiles in UK and 1bn+ globally.
LinkedIn therefore provides a far bigger sample size than traditional workforce statistics, i.e. Office for National & Statistics and survey-based industry reports. However, this traditional data does provide value through showing the shape and scale of the industry and is used in our analysis.
To provide the Games workforce data Unscrambled used a range of LinkedIn tools in order to examine user profiles.
Once the data is gathered Unscrambled worked on a two-stage process:
1 – Their proprietary AI algorithms take this raw data and categorise the workforce into required outputs.
2 – These outputs are then validated to ensure accuracy by comparing to traditional metrics and industry reports in order to verify core ratios.
